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I bought I new PC system, based on a motherboard with the H57 chipset and the intel core i3 530 CPU. After a faultless installation of openSUSE 11.2, I had some initial problems getting the integrated Intel HD graphics to work. A kernel update to linux kernel-2.6.34-35 using the latest openSUSE 11.3 Milestone7 DVD, solved the problem for me. Read on for a few more details.

The System

The components for my new PC arrived last week and I finally got a chance to put it all together last night. The system components were chosen with low-energy consumption and silent operation in mind. The specs are as follows:

ASUS P7H57D-V EVO motherboard

Intel Core i3 530 2.93GHz Socket 1156

Zalman CNPS10x Flex CPU cooler (intended to operating without fans)

2x Crucial 1GB DDR3

OCZ 400W Stealth XStream PSU (140mm Fan for silent operation)

Seagate Barracuda LP ST3500412AS 500GB HD SATA2 5900 rpm 16MB Cache

Evidently, I did not really see the low-energy idea through to the end. If I had, I would have traded the ATX motherboard for one of the mini-ITX LG1156 motherboards from ZOTAC.

Installing openSUSE 11.2

The installation from an openSUSE 11.2 DVD completed without problems. It was only on the first boot-up, that the problem with the integrated Intel HD Graphics became apparent. The system attempted to start the X server, but just flashed the screen a few times and then reverted to a console login.

The solution

openSUSE 11.2 (kernel-2.6.34-25) on intel core i3

Reading some more information on the internet revealed that the problem could most likely be solved by a kernel upgrade and/or that of the xf86-video-intel graphics driver. The trouble is, that the most current kernel for openSUSE 11.2 is still the kernel-2.6.31 release.

So in short, the solution was to download last nights build of the very latest and greatest openSUSE 11.3 Milestone7 DVD using wget from the console. I then started YAST in the graphical console mode and added the openSUSE 11.3-Milestone7-DVD iso-file as a repository. After this, the new kernel-2.6.34.35 shows up in the normal YAST Software Management tool, and can be installed like any other package. A reboot of the system presented me with the lovely green login-screen of an openSUSE 11.2 installation. The graphics now work, wobbly windows, animations, cube-switcher and all. The current kernel is 2.6.34-35-default.

Notice, that I haven’t yet upgraded the xf86-video-intel driver. I am going to do that next , just for fun.